Lost Art Press

Lie-Nielsen Show in Charleston with Roy Underhill

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Charleston, S.C., is my favorite city, and so it pains me that I’m not going to be able to attend the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event there next month. My liver and cholesterol, however, are well-pleased by this unfortunate turn of events.

This year, the Lie-Nielsen staff has arranged a pre-show event to visit Drayton Hall, which offers a period rush like no other place I’ve been. It’s an 18th-century plantation that is unrestored. No modernization. No electricity. No horrible 1970s “reconstructions.”

I’ve been to Drayton many times (once during a hurricane), and never get tired of it as a woodworker. Every plaster and wooden detail has been left alone for you to discover, even the marks on a door frame that record the heights of the family’s children.

I wish I had more inspiring words other than: You need to see this. It will open your eyes to the 18th-century way of making things.

To add even more fun to the mix, Roy Underhill will be on hand during the tour to offer commentary and interpretation.

The special tour is 11 a.m. Thursday April 9. Call 1-800-327-2520 to reserve your place at $32 per person.

Then the whole crew will head to the American College of the Building Arts for a presentation by Roy Underhill and dinner at the Craftsman Tap House. In my mind, it’s a perfect day.

Oh, and there’s two more days of a Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event at the American College of the Building Arts on April 10-11. And it’s all in the most gorgeous city in the world with amazing food and great, great architecture.

Sigh.

Maybe next year.

Read more details on the Lie-Nielsen site here. And hoist a few beers for me at the Craftsman Tap House.

— Christopher Schwarz

Grind Twice, Young Chiseler

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“Do not condemn the cutting qualities of a new tool until you have ground it more than once, as invariably you will find a perfect edge on the second if not the first time grinding.”

— Charles Buck, of Buck Bros., in “A Few Points on Sharpening to Users of Wood Working Tools.” For more on “decarb,” see this old post I wrote.

The Best Beekeepers…

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The best words of advice I’ve heard sound simple until you give them some thought. Here are three things to consider.

“Good beekeepers have to figure some things out for themselves.”

This was a simple statement made by a beekeeper and mother to her teenaged woodworker who was struggling with sharpening, setting up a handplane and producing a nice surface.

She didn’t know about woodworking, but she knew about farming and bees. And when her young son despaired that he could not get his plane to work, she spoke those 10 fantastic words:

“Good beekeepers have to figure some things out for themselves.”

A couple years ago I heard Mike Siemsen of “The Naked Woodworker” DVD fame discussing workbenches with a new woodworker.

Question: What about moisture content blah, blah, blah?

Siemsen: Don’t worry about it. It will work out fine.

Question: But the wood species yadda yadda annular rings shinka shinka gymnosperms?

Siemsen: It will all work out fine. I wouldn’t worry about it.

Question: So E-value, Janka rating and tangent grain? Roubo, Nicholson and Klausz?

Yoda: Fine it will all work out. Worry not.

…this conversation continued for another 30 minutes in the same format.

Third vignette. Matthew Sheldon Bickford, author of “Mouldings in Practice,” ends his book with the best single-word ending sentence in the history of woodworking writing. Stick with me here.

“Be willing to succeed by being willing to fail,” he writes on page 241. “Tie yourself to your actions. Stop reading. Err!”

— Christopher Schwarz

The Spaghetti Bowl

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Studley-cover-2(3)As I recall from years long past there is in Miami a notorious interchange known as “The Spaghetti Bowl,” no doubt the result of some distant urban planner making a dot on a map and saying, “This is where all the highways meet!” I have no doubt that similar complexes exist in many metropolitan areas, but the one in Miami is especially memorable due to the highway routes being stacked five high as they weave together, merging and departing with and from each other.

This absurd traffic construct serves as a nearly perfect metaphor for the current fortnight.  It seems that the threads of LAP and other projects are stacked about five high.

Last night I sent off my final review of the page proofs for “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley,” which Chris sent me last week when I was in Florida on a speaking engagement talking about my favorite topic – historic wood finishing – and reveling in a reunion with my mom and all of my siblings. I spent what time I could on the review, but did not actually finish until midnight last night. I feel about 500 pounds lighter today.

I am not displeased with the product (that is Donspeak for “Holy cow, this is great!” If I wasn’t such a Calvinist I would be really proud). Narayan’s photos and Wesley’s design make the book a nearly decadent experience. The book goes to press very soon (Ed note: Next week), and I am very much anticipating the first of several boxes of books arriving on my doorstep. (I owe copies to about two score contributors to the effort.)

The preparations for the accompanying H.O. Studley exhibit are in red-hot mode, as my fabrication of the exhibit accouterments are well underway, the first slate of big checks have flowed out for the exhibit hall rental, platform and vitrine fabrication, insurance, graphics, lighting, secured shipping, etc.… Tickets are still available, so if you ever wanted to get up close and personal with Studley’s tool cabinet and workbench, this may be your one and only chance.

On Saturday past I presented “Making New Finishes Look Old” for the Society of American Period Furniture Makers’ Tidewater chapter, a test run for my demonstration at the SAPFM Mid-Year meeting in Knoxville, Tenn., in June. Increasingly I find my mind wandering and fingers noodling on the keyboard in crafting my magnum opus “Historic Finisher’s Handbook” (HFH), which will begin in earnest as soon as I complete the revisions for “Roubo on Furniture Making” this summer, and then take the following three years. If I go “dark” this autumn it is because I’m up in the barn having too much fun working through the dozens of recipes detailed in HFH.

And today I spent some time conserving a Roentgen desk; tonight I’m wrapping up the conservation of a c.1720 Italian tortoiseshell veneer mirror frame with another dozen conservation projects in wait.

Yeah, I think the “Spaghetti Bowl” description is just about right.

— Don Williams

www.donsbarn.com